6 ms·

That first article she wrote, exposing the culture at Uber, was profoundly upsetting and an important moment in the history of our industry. Kudos to her for st

That first article she wrote, exposing the culture at Uber, was profoundly upsetting and an important moment in the history of our industry. Kudos to her for standing up to one the most egregiously hostile work environments I've ever read about.

greatestdana 7y ago
That's a great point -- the blog post was a turning point and should be hailed as such.
commandlinefan 7y ago
I remember reading that post and being surprised how little of it was actually sexism (the only thing I saw that qualified was the thing about the shirts), and how much of it was just maltreatment of programmers of all types. But I guess if you have to slap the label "sexism" on it to get it to be taken seriously, we take what we can get.
- twright 7y ago
  I have to disagree. > Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done. Management was sexist and the structure was kept unchanged and unchecked by HR. The jackets event, in addition to others mentioned in the post, are an extension/demonstration of that behavior.
  - magduf 7y ago
    I'm not so sure about management being sexist; I think a more likely and accurate explanation is that HR and management are sociopathic, and simply don't care about protecting people from abuse. Doing that would be bad for their profitability, so they choose actions which are better for the corporation's profits. That just happens to equal protecting sexual abusers. The predators are already high-up in the company, and disrupting the status quo is seen as very risky to corporate profits, so they protect these people.
    - wpietri 7y ago
      There's no reason it can't be both. Your theory that sociopath executives only exploit people for money and not for other things they personally enjoy is not one that matches my experience. And of course there's a long history of the "old boys' club" excusing sexist abuse with a "boys will be boys" mentality. So even if we didn't have a lot of evidence of how bro-y Uber was, your notion that they somehow escaped society's baseline level of sexism doesn't really stand up to Occam's Razor.
      - magduf 7y ago
        >Your theory that sociopath executives only exploit people for money and not for other things they personally enjoy is not one that matches my experience. I think I wasn't clear enough: I'm really pointing at HR, not at general company management. You're absolutely right: corporate executives definitely do exploit people for things other than money (such as sex). I'm only looking at the situation where some manager is sexually harassing someone, and then HR protects the harasser because he's high-up in the corporation. HR isn't getting anything out of this harassment, other than keeping their jobs and furthering the financial interest of the corporation. I do get your point about the boys' club thing, but I do think it's pretty common for female-led HR departments to also protect abusers. To me, it's just pure sociopathy: HR wants to protect the corporation at all costs, and the person running HR simply doesn't care about the victims at all.
        wpietri 7y ago
        Ah, got it. Good point. Thanks for clarifying!
- scott_s 7y ago
  The sexism I see in her post: Upon joining, her manager sexually propositioned her; a subsequent manager sabotaged her performance reviews and attempts at transferring to keep a woman on his team; they gave leather jackets to SREs as a gift, but would only get jackets made for men (I think this is what you refer to as "the shirts"); she recalls many emails that she does not describe; HR claims she is the problem in all of her claims; she was threatened with firing over her claims of sexual harassment, and they backed off when she pointed out that was illegal. Those are the instances. What that tells me is that it was a deeply sexist system. See: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...
  - e40 7y ago
    Honestly, it sounds like a sociopath was in charge of HR.
    - magduf 7y ago
      >Honestly, it sounds like a sociopath was in charge of HR. The very topmost post in this thread you're posting in discusses how people should be educated that the whole function of HR is not to be a moral arbiter, but to protect the company's financial interests, which is 100% true IMO. Therefore, it seems that nearly every company of any size has a sociopath running HR. How else can you explain people who would protect sexual predators in their companies and enable victims to be abused, all because it improves the company's bottom line?
  - conradfr 7y ago
    Propositioning to her is not really sexism, but it's inappropriate and unprofessional.
    - scott_s 7y ago
      Propositioning a woman who you manage at work is sexual harassment and sexist.
- danso 7y ago
  This is the typical maltreatment you experience as a programmer? > After the first couple of weeks of training, I chose to join the team that worked on my area of expertise, and this is where things started getting weird. On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR. Or this? > When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering. Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and told me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR.
  - rndgermandude 7y ago
    Regarding the propositioning for sex, a uni buddy of mine was propositioned during an interview for an internship by his male interviewer (buddy is gay, interviewer likely is too). It was absolutely vile, unsettling behavior, and it made me think it might be more common than I previously thought. Later, one of my sisters told us about how she applied for some job at a startup (not an IT related job), and after the interview she was told she wouldn't get the job because of other strong applicants and her lack of experience in the field, which is fine and true. But then one of the interviewers asked her out for drinks right after that, at which point she couldn't lose the feeling that maybe she was refused the job only so that this interviewer could hit on her later (which he probably couldn't have if she got her job and he became a superior to her). When - as a young(er) man - I did my mandatory civil services (which I had to do because I refused military service) in a hospital, there were not just one but few female nurses[1] who engaged in what I would consider inappropriate remarks ("I'd eat you up", "nice tushy, you should wear tighter pants", "if I was a few years younger I would...") and one nurse going so far as "jokingly" slapping me on the butt. There were a sizable amount of patients who also engaged in such remarks, as well as male patients non-nonchalantly asking me "how many of those nurses have you banged so far?". I am still mad at myself that I didn't report at least the slapping up the chain, thinking at the time "I don't wanna be that guy getting angry over a joke" and "I don't want to be seen overreacting or considered to be a victim"; and I didn't even have the additional problem of having to care about my career as this job was something I didn't want to keep doing anyway as soon as my mandatory time ran out. I talked to my dad about it, who happened to have done his own civil service in the exact same hospital in the late 1970s; his experiences were more or less the same, tho he said he didn't even consider reporting such behavior at all. What I guess I am trying to say is that this kind of vile behavior is in fact pretty common, unfortunately, and also not necessarily only something men do to women (although I am sure it is more prevalent in that direction). But most of it I wouldn't attribute it to sexism, but to assholes being assholes. [1] most of the people, especially the nurses, were nice or at least professional
- alistairSH 7y ago
  Did we read the same blog entry? Her first manager propositioned her for sex almost on day one. HR lied about that managers past issues and told her suck it up or receive a negative review. She received a negative review anyways (changed after the fact - her in-person review was positive). This blocked role changes and made her ineligible for graduate tuition reimbursement. Leather jackets for the men, women told to deal with it. Threatened by manager with termination because she reported somebody to HR.
  - magduf 7y ago
    While I do agree about the jackets thing being sexist, I would like to point out that this isn't always a man vs. woman thing. At my current company, they like to buy corporate-branded clothing for employees too. T-shirts, polo shirts, and sweatshirts/hoodies are what they normally get. The last time they got some shirts, I went to go get some, and they were all in L, XL, and XXL sizes. I'm a tall guy, but I'm slim and wear a size M. Other employees, including guys who wear size S, all thought I was weird for not wanting a free sweatshirt that's too large and baggy. Also, there were no female sizes that I can remember, it was just all those huge sizes. Also, there's the issue of just how far the company needs to go to cover everyone. How many different sizes should they get? My last girlfriend could not wear most normal sizes; even XS was too large for her, and she needed XXS if she could find it. She usually bought her clothes in Asia when she went back there because the only stuff that usually fit her here was in children's sizes (her size is pretty average for women however where she comes from). What does the company need to do for people who are at a size extreme? Quite possibly, the clothing vendor my company uses doesn't even have a size to fit my ex-gf. But yeah, not even bothering to get the jackets in any women's sizes at all is pretty blatantly sexist.
    - alistairSH 7y ago
      The way I read it, they actually had all the employees try on jackets and ordered them for each employee, except they turned around and didn't order female jackets because they didn't meet a minimum order size. That's quite a bit different than ordering a batch of jackets in some array of sizes and hoping most people can find one that fits. That's still a bit shitty, but not nearly as shitty as above. I'll also note that having been through several rounds of custom clothing orders (for a sports team), getting the count for women's items waived is common, as long as the total order size meets minimums. Of course none of the above is as shitty as the government agency my neighbor works at that asked the female employees to serve cocktails at a winter social.
- mercer 7y ago
  I'll both agree and disagree with you, and to some degree with other people replying to your comment. You're probably correct in thinking this maltreatment extended to men, or generally in ways that weren't specifically sexist. That doesn't mean that the sexist aspect of the maltreatment isn't also true, or an additional or more specific problem. I'd say it's completely fine that the problems at Uber were presented from a sexist perspective, as that is a more salient and quite likely more damaging perspective. That said, I do think there's some value to your comment in that it's very likely this kind of culture probably hurt many people in ways that weren't sexist. Highlighting Fowler's perspective, hopefully, doesn't bring to attention sexist problems at the expense of others. I don't feel it does, so far.
- greenhorse 7y ago
  You have to almost be intentionally looking the other way not to see the clear sexism at play here.
deeg 7y ago
Susan Fowler is a hero; it must have taken a tremendous amount of courage to hit the 'send' button while knowing her life was going to change. My niece is about to graduate into the SDE work force and I have little doubt that the culture is incrementally better because of Fowler.
- MockObject 7y ago
  > the SDE work force Google didn't help with this acronym.
  - greenhorse 7y ago
    maybe software development engineer?
  - guitarbill 7y ago
    presumably "software development engineer" (think mainly Amazon uses this)
  - deeg 7y ago
    Sorry, I'll be better with acronyms. Software development engineer.
edanm 7y ago
Totally agree. The only thing I'd add - I'm not sure of the exact timeline, or the exact causation chain - but I feel like Susan Fowler's article was one of the lead-ups to the MeToo movement. So in a sense, what she did wasn't just an important moment for our industry, but for all industries.

greatestdana 7y ago

That's a great point -- the blog post was a turning point and should be hailed as such.

commandlinefan 7y ago

I remember reading that post and being surprised how little of it was actually sexism (the only thing I saw that qualified was the thing about the shirts), and how much of it was just maltreatment of programmers of all types. But I guess if you have to slap the label "sexism" on it to get it to be taken seriously, we take what we can get.

twright 7y ago
I have to disagree. > Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done. Management was sexist and the structure was kept unchanged and unchecked by HR. The jackets event, in addition to others mentioned in the post, are an extension/demonstration of that behavior.
- magduf 7y ago
  I'm not so sure about management being sexist; I think a more likely and accurate explanation is that HR and management are sociopathic, and simply don't care about protecting people from abuse. Doing that would be bad for their profitability, so they choose actions which are better for the corporation's profits. That just happens to equal protecting sexual abusers. The predators are already high-up in the company, and disrupting the status quo is seen as very risky to corporate profits, so they protect these people.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    There's no reason it can't be both. Your theory that sociopath executives only exploit people for money and not for other things they personally enjoy is not one that matches my experience. And of course there's a long history of the "old boys' club" excusing sexist abuse with a "boys will be boys" mentality. So even if we didn't have a lot of evidence of how bro-y Uber was, your notion that they somehow escaped society's baseline level of sexism doesn't really stand up to Occam's Razor.
    - magduf 7y ago
      >Your theory that sociopath executives only exploit people for money and not for other things they personally enjoy is not one that matches my experience. I think I wasn't clear enough: I'm really pointing at HR, not at general company management. You're absolutely right: corporate executives definitely do exploit people for things other than money (such as sex). I'm only looking at the situation where some manager is sexually harassing someone, and then HR protects the harasser because he's high-up in the corporation. HR isn't getting anything out of this harassment, other than keeping their jobs and furthering the financial interest of the corporation. I do get your point about the boys' club thing, but I do think it's pretty common for female-led HR departments to also protect abusers. To me, it's just pure sociopathy: HR wants to protect the corporation at all costs, and the person running HR simply doesn't care about the victims at all.
      - wpietri 7y ago
        Ah, got it. Good point. Thanks for clarifying!
scott_s 7y ago
The sexism I see in her post: Upon joining, her manager sexually propositioned her; a subsequent manager sabotaged her performance reviews and attempts at transferring to keep a woman on his team; they gave leather jackets to SREs as a gift, but would only get jackets made for men (I think this is what you refer to as "the shirts"); she recalls many emails that she does not describe; HR claims she is the problem in all of her claims; she was threatened with firing over her claims of sexual harassment, and they backed off when she pointed out that was illegal. Those are the instances. What that tells me is that it was a deeply sexist system. See: https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...
- e40 7y ago
  Honestly, it sounds like a sociopath was in charge of HR.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >Honestly, it sounds like a sociopath was in charge of HR. The very topmost post in this thread you're posting in discusses how people should be educated that the whole function of HR is not to be a moral arbiter, but to protect the company's financial interests, which is 100% true IMO. Therefore, it seems that nearly every company of any size has a sociopath running HR. How else can you explain people who would protect sexual predators in their companies and enable victims to be abused, all because it improves the company's bottom line?
- conradfr 7y ago
  Propositioning to her is not really sexism, but it's inappropriate and unprofessional.
  - scott_s 7y ago
    Propositioning a woman who you manage at work is sexual harassment and sexist.
danso 7y ago
This is the typical maltreatment you experience as a programmer? > After the first couple of weeks of training, I chose to join the team that worked on my area of expertise, and this is where things started getting weird. On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR. Or this? > When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering. Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and told me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR.
- rndgermandude 7y ago
  Regarding the propositioning for sex, a uni buddy of mine was propositioned during an interview for an internship by his male interviewer (buddy is gay, interviewer likely is too). It was absolutely vile, unsettling behavior, and it made me think it might be more common than I previously thought. Later, one of my sisters told us about how she applied for some job at a startup (not an IT related job), and after the interview she was told she wouldn't get the job because of other strong applicants and her lack of experience in the field, which is fine and true. But then one of the interviewers asked her out for drinks right after that, at which point she couldn't lose the feeling that maybe she was refused the job only so that this interviewer could hit on her later (which he probably couldn't have if she got her job and he became a superior to her). When - as a young(er) man - I did my mandatory civil services (which I had to do because I refused military service) in a hospital, there were not just one but few female nurses[1] who engaged in what I would consider inappropriate remarks ("I'd eat you up", "nice tushy, you should wear tighter pants", "if I was a few years younger I would...") and one nurse going so far as "jokingly" slapping me on the butt. There were a sizable amount of patients who also engaged in such remarks, as well as male patients non-nonchalantly asking me "how many of those nurses have you banged so far?". I am still mad at myself that I didn't report at least the slapping up the chain, thinking at the time "I don't wanna be that guy getting angry over a joke" and "I don't want to be seen overreacting or considered to be a victim"; and I didn't even have the additional problem of having to care about my career as this job was something I didn't want to keep doing anyway as soon as my mandatory time ran out. I talked to my dad about it, who happened to have done his own civil service in the exact same hospital in the late 1970s; his experiences were more or less the same, tho he said he didn't even consider reporting such behavior at all. What I guess I am trying to say is that this kind of vile behavior is in fact pretty common, unfortunately, and also not necessarily only something men do to women (although I am sure it is more prevalent in that direction). But most of it I wouldn't attribute it to sexism, but to assholes being assholes. [1] most of the people, especially the nurses, were nice or at least professional
alistairSH 7y ago
Did we read the same blog entry? Her first manager propositioned her for sex almost on day one. HR lied about that managers past issues and told her suck it up or receive a negative review. She received a negative review anyways (changed after the fact - her in-person review was positive). This blocked role changes and made her ineligible for graduate tuition reimbursement. Leather jackets for the men, women told to deal with it. Threatened by manager with termination because she reported somebody to HR.
- magduf 7y ago
  While I do agree about the jackets thing being sexist, I would like to point out that this isn't always a man vs. woman thing. At my current company, they like to buy corporate-branded clothing for employees too. T-shirts, polo shirts, and sweatshirts/hoodies are what they normally get. The last time they got some shirts, I went to go get some, and they were all in L, XL, and XXL sizes. I'm a tall guy, but I'm slim and wear a size M. Other employees, including guys who wear size S, all thought I was weird for not wanting a free sweatshirt that's too large and baggy. Also, there were no female sizes that I can remember, it was just all those huge sizes. Also, there's the issue of just how far the company needs to go to cover everyone. How many different sizes should they get? My last girlfriend could not wear most normal sizes; even XS was too large for her, and she needed XXS if she could find it. She usually bought her clothes in Asia when she went back there because the only stuff that usually fit her here was in children's sizes (her size is pretty average for women however where she comes from). What does the company need to do for people who are at a size extreme? Quite possibly, the clothing vendor my company uses doesn't even have a size to fit my ex-gf. But yeah, not even bothering to get the jackets in any women's sizes at all is pretty blatantly sexist.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    The way I read it, they actually had all the employees try on jackets and ordered them for each employee, except they turned around and didn't order female jackets because they didn't meet a minimum order size. That's quite a bit different than ordering a batch of jackets in some array of sizes and hoping most people can find one that fits. That's still a bit shitty, but not nearly as shitty as above. I'll also note that having been through several rounds of custom clothing orders (for a sports team), getting the count for women's items waived is common, as long as the total order size meets minimums. Of course none of the above is as shitty as the government agency my neighbor works at that asked the female employees to serve cocktails at a winter social.
mercer 7y ago
I'll both agree and disagree with you, and to some degree with other people replying to your comment. You're probably correct in thinking this maltreatment extended to men, or generally in ways that weren't specifically sexist. That doesn't mean that the sexist aspect of the maltreatment isn't also true, or an additional or more specific problem. I'd say it's completely fine that the problems at Uber were presented from a sexist perspective, as that is a more salient and quite likely more damaging perspective. That said, I do think there's some value to your comment in that it's very likely this kind of culture probably hurt many people in ways that weren't sexist. Highlighting Fowler's perspective, hopefully, doesn't bring to attention sexist problems at the expense of others. I don't feel it does, so far.
greenhorse 7y ago
You have to almost be intentionally looking the other way not to see the clear sexism at play here.

deeg 7y ago

Susan Fowler is a hero; it must have taken a tremendous amount of courage to hit the 'send' button while knowing her life was going to change. My niece is about to graduate into the SDE work force and I have little doubt that the culture is incrementally better because of Fowler.

MockObject 7y ago
> the SDE work force Google didn't help with this acronym.
- greenhorse 7y ago
  maybe software development engineer?
- guitarbill 7y ago
  presumably "software development engineer" (think mainly Amazon uses this)
- deeg 7y ago
  Sorry, I'll be better with acronyms. Software development engineer.

edanm 7y ago

Totally agree. The only thing I'd add - I'm not sure of the exact timeline, or the exact causation chain - but I feel like Susan Fowler's article was one of the lead-ups to the MeToo movement. So in a sense, what she did wasn't just an important moment for our industry, but for all industries.